Cheap Parcel Delivery Official Discussion

kiera123_2

stu68 wrote: »

I used Parcelbee for 3 large (ish) parcels this week and the courier was Parcelforce 24. Only one parcel got there on time the other 2 were a good 24 hours late , Parcelforce customer service really sucked and the tracking hardly ever updates , when i called them they told me the parcels are stuck at the "HUB" and they cant trace them until they move from the "HUB" and could not tell me why 2 of the 3 were "stuck" I thought DHL were bad but their customer service is 100% better .I contacted Parcelbee and they say that they are ONLY using Parcelforce for uk to uk deliveries at the moment .That is a real shame as up till now they have used UPS and they were good .So really dont know if i feel confident is using Parcelforce again??:(

Just to let you know DHL collected my Parcelbee parcel today so this seems to have changed.

anon_ymous

Is it a DHL 24 delivery? Its quite annoying that it is indeed DHL, as they seem to wreck a lot of parcels. Parcelforce and UPS have been good to me.

PB, please please please do NOT use Citylink ever.-wouldnt mind PB using TNT though!

Kayster

waqasahmed wrote: »

Is it a DHL 24 delivery? Its quite annoying that it is indeed DHL, as they seem to wreck a lot of parcels. Parcelforce and UPS have been good to me.

PB, please please please do NOT use Citylink ever.-wouldnt mind PB using TNT though!

the uk and european ones i've had collected are DHL express which is 24 hour UK. its the "proper" dhl which fly them around the country not the home delivery dhl.

anon_ymous

In all honesty, I do prefer the proper DHL over HDNL

jordanryan

Do you mean DHL Express or DHL Home?

Also we've seen this before with Low Cost Parcel Delivery. Cheaper prices than everyone. They had DHL, then Parcel Force, then FedEx then gone!

ParcelBee have gone UPS,ParcelForce and now DHL. Again Cheaper prices than everyone else. How long before they're gone and not booking parcels and keeping the money?

Hey, I hope they don't becuase it's great to see someone with great prices but I like to know who's collecting my parcel etc something ParcelBee and ParcelMoney don't do.

anon_ymous

I think the fact that your order goes through paypal, it means that you can get your money back from them

If they didnt use paypal(and had an optional bit where you can pay by paypal), they could charge
£5.59 for UK delivery
£12.83 for European delivery and
£23.94 for the rest of the world

Because of how they've done their site(using seriff), I suppose it would be quite hard for them to offer a secure card terminal, so you cant get an option of which service you wish to use

sandiep

jordanryan wrote: »

ParcelBee have gone UPS,ParcelForce and now DHL. Again Cheaper prices than everyone else. How long before they're gone and not booking parcels and keeping the money?

.

UPS instigated quite a lot of changes in January 2010 in the UK, including an increased tariff, an increase fuel surcharge for road deliveries, and a surcharge if you book a collection the same day as you need it uplifted. I guess that these charges made UPS too expensive for the parcelbee average customer profile.

Parcelforce are generally unhappy at being in the reseller market. It is something that they are carefully trying to extract themselves out of. No bearing on any specific resellers, it's just something that parcelforce in general have found brings them more bother than profit. I am guessing that on contract renewal, simply parcelforces prices went up, it's the quickest way to get yourself out of a market.

DHL are DHL, usually the cheapest, but with a bit of a sting in the tail, particularly if you're the reseller and have to take all the flack for DHL not turning up and delivering. Whilst there are other similar priced services from other carriers, a reseller might be sorely tempted not to offer DHL services. However, if those other carriers go up in price, an you know that your customers will visit 5 parcel sites to save themselvs 50p, then you may well decide to put DHL back on your list of carriers, and just handle all the "DHL lost my parcel" crap.

Just my thoughts. There's always a reason, and the parcel market has been very fast changing since November last year.

anon_ymous

Sandie, didnt realise that about UPS, however I did read somewhere(probably here) about pf unwilling to resell their products.

Lets hope they dont use FedEx in the future, though they might use TNT

If you never knew of resellers, I suppose DHL direct are the cheapest option you could use, so they may just stick with DHL

Other services for a normally joe bloggs, would seem a bit more expensive to use

It would be nice if they could stick to the carriers that are listed with paypal, when you need to add tracking information

If they are going to be more changes to companies, Id rather the companies be:
either FedEx or AireborneExpress, though I dont like FedEx and have never heard of AE

Kayster

waqasahmed wrote: »

I think the fact that your order goes through paypal, it means that you can get your money back from them

Its not the postage cost that hurts when a reseller goes under its the loss of any claims you have in the pipeline. I've only had one go desperately wrong. That was a few years ago with a £200 package with DHL through an ebay reseller called "balloon and gift".
The receiver claimed he had not received the parcel. DHL tracking shown it had been signed for. Receiver made a paypal claim against me saying that although it was signed for he had never received it. DHL where then unable to produce a signature even though the tracking website said it had been signed for so perhpas the receiver was not lying - i do not know. Paypal refunded the receiver. DHL then set about investigating what had happened which i think was a dodgy driver but in the meantime ballon and gift lost their DHL reseller status. DHL would not talk to me, ballon and gift washed their hands of anything to do with parcels i was £200 out of pocket.
There is a risk with using resellers.

sandiep

I haven't heard much about Fedex expanding in the UK into that b2c market. Business post/UKMail/Fedex likes its b2b customers, where people are in all day, and deliveries are easy. And it's targeting those business that can send out a lot of smallish parcels most days with some really good regular sender rates. In fact, if you ask anyone that resells business post and say it's a residential customer, most of them will hold their hands up and start tutting like a garage mechanic looking at a ford escort!